Organized farm labour has won a major victory in Ontario. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday the rights of farm workers have been violated.

At fault is a law introduced by the provincial government six years ago.

The Supreme Court says the Ontario Conservatives have 18 months to change the law or lose it altogether.

In 1994, the former NDP government passed legislation allowing farm workers to organize. But the Conservatives trashed it when they swept to power the following year.

In 1995, 200 mushroom farm workers in Southwestern Ontario joined the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. But the new law said farm workers couldn't belong to unions, and the workers were forced to back out.

The court ruling says that move violated the workers' rights.

NDP labour critic Peter Kormos says he feels some vindication in the verdict.

"The New Democrats resisted as strong as we could the Conservatives successful exercise in removing agriculture workers from collective bargaining rights. They (the Conservatives) clearly have to restore those rights that New Democrats established in the early 1990s."

Hector Delanghe, the chair of a labour issues co-ordinating committee for various fruit and vegetable growers in Ontario, says in an ideal world farm workers shouldn't need to unionize. "There is some bad employers out there and in this case I think that's where the farm workers would have a legitimate beef if they're not treated properly."

The Ontario government has 18 months to replace that law.

The NDP wants the legislature recalled early, so workers don't have to wait any longer for their rights.